The Middle East

Obama and the Palestinians

A fleeting visit

PALESTINIANS spoke of an ill-wind from the West. A sandstorm shrouded President Barack Obama’s visit to Bethlehem, Jesus’ birthplace in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the last-stop on this three-day tour to the holy land. Mr Obama’s outreach to Israel, they feared, had come at their expense. He visited the graves of Israel’s founders, but not that of Yasser Arafat, Palestine’s first president, despite parking his helicopter alongside when he visited the West Bank city of Ramallah. He repeatedly paid his respects to Jewish suffering and toured the Holocaust Museum, but could not utter the word "refugees", say Palestinians, which might acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homeland in the 1948 and 1967 wars.

Underscoring the asymmetry in the relationship, Mr Obama spent three days in Israel and almost as many hours in Palestine. While he reached out to Israeli students, Palestinians were kept far away. A phalanx of security guards allowed people to enter a distant corner of Manger Square in Bethlehem, a few hundred metres away from the president, but no closer.

The lacklustre welcome mirrored the Palestinians' mood. While trimmers in Israel had been weeding the pavements for days, in Ramallah and Bethlehem there was barely a broom in sight. Posters from a protest rally against Mr Obama the previous day still blew in the wind. The blustery sandstorm spoilt the photo-ops. The Palestinian press offered no positive comments, and though the protests were largely small the police did nothing to muffle the expressions of anger.

Mr Obama’s message, said Palestinian officials, was as derisory as the choreography of his visit. On arrival in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority which runs the West Bank, he implied that the onus was on Mahmoud Abbas, the PA’s president, to restart the political process. In their joint press conference, he echoed Israel’s demand that Mr Abbas abandon his pre-condition of an Israeli halt to settlement construction to talks, albeit more tactfully. It was time, said the president, to dispense with "old formulas and habits", sidelining Palestinian concerns that Israel would again use extended negotiations to further build and settle inside a putative Palestinian state.So tense did the press conference seem that commentators likened it to Mr Obama’s first-term encounters with Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

For Palestinian negotiators, Mr Obama’s apparent rewriting of the old rules for peace-making makes the call to resume direct talks all the harder to swallow. Speaking in Ramallah, he seemed to reduce the five core issues outlined by previous American presidents to two, namely Israeli security and Palestinian borders. He made no mention of two others—Palestinian claims that East Jerusalem be their capital and the return of refugees; and he recommended that a third—Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank—be addressed once a peace deal had been reached. To do otherwise, he said, would be to put the cart before the horse. Though he insisted that a future Palestinian state be independent, viable and contiguous, he backpedalled on a previous statement that the borders of 1967, predating Israel’s occupation, form the basis of a future Palestinian state, and dropped all mention of a timetable for concluding a deal.Further riling the Palestinians, he publicly endorsed Israel’s demand to be recognised as a Jewish state, which Palestinians take as an renunciation of what they claim is a UN-sanctioned right of refugees to return.

Mr Obama's denunciation of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, could further cost Mr Abbas the domestic buy-in he needs to return to the table. While reaching out across Israel’s political divide, and shaking hands with Israelis opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state, Mr Obama repudiated Hamas, Palestine’s best-organised political force, for refusing to recognise Israel. Until now, Hamas leaders have said that they would not oppose negotiations for a two-state settlement, should they resume. By publicly excluding the Islamists, Mr Obama increases the risk they could again become spoilers. The few rockets fired from Gaza during Mr Obama are a reminder of the power the Islamists can muster.

In the wake of Mr Obama’s visit, some Palestinian officials mourned the absence of his predecessor, George Bush. Making a similar trip a decade earlier, Mr Bush spoke of the occupation on “1967” lands, stipulated that Jerusalem would be part of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and demanded that Israel stop settlement expansion and remove the 100-plus outposts in the West Bank which even under its laws it had not authorised. Unlike Mr Bush’s 2003 roadmap, Mr Obama offered no such formula to hold Israel to account.

Supporters of Mr Obama argue that he needs to woo the parties back to the table before dictating terms. But many observers remain unconvinced that Mr Netanayhu is serious about seeking a two-state settlement. Some Israeli officials suspect he would pocket the president’s new positions, and continue to play the blame-game with the Palestinians, accusing them of obstructing a deal. Certainly, Israel’s initial actions in the wake of Mr Obama’s visit suggested little in its posture has changed.Mr Obama praised Palestinian non-violent protests but within hours of his departure Israeli police began dismantling a small camp site Palestinians had erected during his visit in an attempt to hold onto E1, a strategic slither of West Bank land east of Jerusalem.

This just shows that the gloating TE displayed - along with much of the liberal press - at Obama's reelection and predictions of "payback" for Netanyahu were so much of wishful thinking. Far from any "revenge" scenarios Obama seems to have genuinely come around to Israel's point of view of focusing on security and economic development, rather than on any reckless gambles in the name of "peace at any price".

We have already seen the results of "democracy at any price" in action in the form of the so called "Arab spring" turned into "Islamic winter" with a healthy dose of Al Qaida. 70,000+ slaughtered Syrians may not be a concern for the liberal elites, but the Israelis know better than anyone the neighborhood they live in.

In Jerusalem, Obama spoke about "the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, their right to justice, must also be recognized. Put yourself in their shoes. Look at the world through their eyes...Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer...Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land...I can promise you this, political leaders will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see. Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things."

This ordinary person has been to both sides of The Wall in Israel Palestine 7 times since 2005 and I ran for Congress in 2012, specifically because I have been trying to "create the change" in US Policy that colludes in Israel's Nuclear Ambiguity/DECEPTIONS and sustains the illegal, immoral and untenable occupation of the indigenous people.

The world is a nasty place, if for a second we all stopped the double standards we will realize that its not only Israel that has a hot spot within its territory. The Palestinians for all their cries could have had their own country in the 1940's when Israel was created but instead they chose to fight to eliminate Israel and today's situation is a product of those decisions

Funny thing is President Bush put forth a plan in 2003 as mentioned in the article and yet we are still here talking about peace. As i see it there is nothing an American President can do unless the two parties are ready to narrow their differences and set on a table. The Jewish state of Israel has certain conditions that needs to be met first before it can engage with the Palestinians and i challenge the Palestinians to met them and lets see what happens.

Palestinians blundered in the 1940s and that's a fact, now the situation is as is, its time for them to be pragmatic, stop violence, take the little that's being offered and negotiate from there less they find themselfs with nothing

I am just so disappointed that my President, whom I strongly supported and had so much hope in, bowed down to AIPAC as quick as he could. Maybe Rahm Emanuel and Rev. Hagee are advising him on this, maybe the AIPAC made him an offer he could not refuse, I don't know what the deal is. I just don't know.

If this still puzzles you, use a search engine of your choice to study "Zionism".

The Economist asks that we keep our remarks on subject. I find your attempt at cyber-voyeurism quite tactless and in violation of that request. I am told that there are websites that cater to your perversion. I can assure you this is not one of them. What the other users of this site say to their bedmates at night is none of your business.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do hear voices when people enter into discussions with me, ask my advice, or converse with me otherwise. I suffer a very mild form of tinnitus from working in a ship's engineroom for three years as second engineer without appropriate hearing protection when I was much younger, but it does not impair my ability to carry on a conversation.

For the life of me, I do not see what my auricular acuity has to do with the welfare of the Palestinian people. Could you elucidate that point for me?